Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Ferrari accident and illegal street racing in Singapore

Gigamole is not the only one in Singapore horrified by the fatal Ferrari accident 4 days ago. Mr Gerard Ee, Chairman of the Public Transport Council seems to have missed the point totally in rejecting what he felt were unfair and harsher calls to restrict high-performance cars in Singapore. But he may be right in that it is not the ownership of the cars that is the problem. It is the irresponsible and reckless behaviour of the car drivers that needs to be reigned in.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that the Ferrari was involved in some sort of street race. Perhaps not in a group, but almost certainly the driver was using the streets of Singapore as his own F1 race circuit. The comment from his wife is quite telling. The deceased Mr Ma was fond of driving his car in the middle of the night because there were few cars on the road.

Illegal street car racing is not unknown in Singapore. Several years ago people and the media were already reporting about it. There are videos on You Tube about it. It is not as if the Traffic Police does not know about it. They were supposed to have cracked down on this.

But no.... illegal street racing has gone on unabated. Read these posts about illegal street racing in the Trip Advisor site for Marina Mandarin Hotel. These posts are as recent as April 2012. So it is public knowledge that this is happening. Can it be that the Traffic Police is unaware of this? Read the post by Frequent Traveller. He called the Police at 3am, and the racing was still going on at 5pm.

So my question is, what the hell has the Traffic Police been doing? Are they really unaware that illegal street racing is going on? That these high-performance cars are tearing up our roads in the wee hours of the morning? Mr Gerard Ee, are you unaware of these illegal street races?

Can it be that the Traffic Police is really aware of these races, but have deliberately turned a blind eye to these races? Why they have done so can only be guessed at. Perhaps it is to allow the rich and irresponsible a place to play their fancy cars? To make Singapore an exciting destination and home for the rich and irresponsible?

8 comments:

I have seen that video of the Ferrari crashing to a taxi and I have to say that it just serves him right to be sued. Having a hot car doesn't give anyone to just blaze off in any street. If you want to race, don't do it in the highway, do it in a track.

Its 6.00am now. I could not go back to bed. I have been up since 3.00am to the horrible sounds of car engines. I looked out of my window and saw close to 80 people on the overhead bridge down by the road. They were the fans and supporter for this illegal car race. Btw, I live on Orchard Boulevard across from the Four Seasons Hotel. I grab my iphone and keys and ran down to the road to see what was going on. Both our security guard stood outside the apartment to keep an eye on me. To my disbelief, there is a actual car race. So I called the police 5 times during the period of one hour. No cars showed up. I video the full hour of the car race and promises to make a lot of noise about this to the traffic police and highlight it to the news!Finally a police car showed up at 5.00am and I told them that I was the one who called 5 times. They then told me that they are here responding to another case involving an accident and not an illegal car race. I just could not believe what I just heard. I promise to do something about this as this illegal races has to STOP as it happens every weekend at the wee hours in the morning.

Hi Hussey, I live near u (Orchard Turn) and I also couldn't sleep because of that. Today at night I've heard another race started ;/ the traffic police should do something about it! I can only post it on my blog, at least it will be more highlighted!

Hey its August 9th again however its 2013! Street race last night got even bigger. Waited 2 hours for Traffic Police after 15 calls. I was told by one of the regular spectators that there will be a race again tonight from 2.00am on Orchard Boulevard. Will see if TP will show up tonight. Errrrr!